Rowan shook her head. “Not yet, thank you. Afterwards—definitely.” I knew what she meant. Here in South Carolina, we put enough sugar in our tea to raise the dead and give them the jitters. I always found that an ice cold glass of sweet tea puts my nerves back together again, and usually keeps me from passing out after a bad working.
“Just in case, I brought bourbon,” Teag said, and waved a small flask that he withdrew from his jacket pocket. “Cassidy might need something a bit stronger than tea, depending on what you have in mind.”
I smiled my thanks at him, sure that my grin was a little twitchy. “What did you want to do with the china?” I asked nervously.
Rowan met my gaze. “Sorren says you’re a psychometric.”
I nodded. “Yep. That’s me. But he didn’t really say what your magic specialty is.”
She chuckled. “I don’t have a ‘specialty’ exactly. I’m more of a general purpose witch, with more practice than I’d like to admit in defensive magic. One thing I think I can do if we join our magic together is not only show everyone what you’re seeing, but put ourselves into the scene—in a matter of speaking.”
“How?” I pressed. Teag had “hitchhiked” on a vision or two by linking me to him with a piece of spelled cloth. Would a witch make the connection differently?
“You hold the objects in your hand, one at a time. I hold your other hand and Sorren’s hand, and Teag connects through Sorren,” she explained. “I should be able to protect you to a degree from the impact of the visions, while projecting the images into a three dimensional setting all around us.” She managed a deprecating smile. “Of course, we won’t be able to interact with the figures. It’s just a memory. But we might pick up a clue if the objects give us different perspectives.”
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath for courage. “Let’s get this party started.”
I sat at the center of the table. The dishes and silverware were all within my reach. Rowan took my left hand, and then Sorren and Teag moved into position. I reached for one of the other serving dishes, figuring that it was a piece everyone might have touched.
My hand grasped the deep bowl, one that probably served up steaming hot stuffing, or fluffy homemade mashed potatoes, perhaps even sweet potato casserole. I sensed echoes of those foods and others, just like I felt a faint remainder of happy times gone by. Then the vision came rushing to the fore, and all the other images were crowded out.
I was back in the dining room I had seen before. This time, I saw the scene through different eyes. I was certain the person whose memories I sensed was a woman, perhaps the wife of the man through whose perspective I had seen the other vision. As the memories began to unfold, I could pick up the woman’s gratitude for the company of family, welcome for the new “friend” who had joined them, contentment for the bounty on the table.
She sat at one end of the formal dining room table, at the far end from the man I’d seen. Her youngest son sat to her right, a boy who looked to be around eight years old. A girl who might have been fourteen was next to him, then an older boy who looked like high school age. On the left were an older couple, probably the parents of the husband or wife. In the last seat on the left was the stranger.
I opened my eyes, and realized that the scene I had envisioned in my mind’s eye had unfolded around us like a hologram, filling the break room. Ghostly, translucent figures sat at an equally insubstantial table filled with images of the china we had in the shop. Rowan nodded for me to continue, and I closed my eyes, since that’s the way I’m used to “seeing” what my magic shows me.
I focused my magic on the stranger, but every time I almost glimpsed the newcomer’s face, the features blurred. The doomed figures at the table were silent, but their images moved as if they were laughing and talking. Unfortunately, my gift doesn’t always come with a sound track. It’s happened, but it’s not a given for my magic, and I couldn’t hear any sound now, no matter how closely I listened.
From the body language, the other adults at the table tried to engage the stranger in conversation. She—I was certain once I glimpsed a hand reaching for a spoon that the outsider was female—nodded and murmured, saying as little as possible. The two youngest children ignored the stranger. The older son was keeping an eye on her while trying not to stare. Something about the newcomer bothered him. Even though I knew how the scene turned out, I found myself hoping he would do something, say something, to warn the others.
I felt an odd shift, a subtle tension I hadn’t felt in the first vision. It almost felt as if the stranger was somehow deflecting attention from her, making it difficult to think about her. I noticed the effect it had on the others, redirecting them so that they almost seemed to forget the stranger was among them.
I forced my attention back to watch the stranger, reminding myself that I stood outside the scene as an onlooker, not a participant, and that the remembered magic shouldn’t be able to affect me. Even so, I had to focus to keep her in my view. I noticed something else strange: the outsider was touching as few items as possible.
More than one heaping serving dish was passed her way, and she shook her head, indicating for the dish to pass by her. She removed a couple of slices of turkey from a tray with her fork and a dollop of mashed potatoes with a serving spoon, but I had the feeling she was either worried about fingerprints or leaving a magical trail—or both. She did not eat anything she put on her plate.
I gritted my teeth and let the remembered scene play out. The boy to my right doubled over, falling forward onto his plate. The woman through whose perspective I viewed the scene rose to help him, and staggered, feeling the effects herself. Everyone else was rising to their feet and then falling to the ground, all except for the stranger.
This time, the vision lasted longer. The woman was slumped across her son, but she had fallen in a way that she could still see. The stranger moved back and forth, dragging the victims back to their chairs and arranging them in their seats. I could glimpse enough of the table to see the bodies placed as if they were a display in a wax museum, or mannequins in a department store window. The stranger rolled the woman from atop her son’s body and picked the boy up, sitting him upright. He was still alive, though his breathing was shallow.
Though the eyes of the woman lying on the floor, I saw a new set of feet enter. Small shoes, sneakers, sized for a woman or a child. The stranger came back to lift the woman whose perspective I shared, settling her roughly into her chair as if she were just a rag doll. I willed myself to focus on the stranger as her face was just inches from the doomed woman’s, and for an instant, the illusion broke. I saw the stranger clearly—a woman of average build with shoulder-length dark hair and a plain face made remarkable by the intensity of the hatred that glinted in her eyes.
The illusion snapped back into place. Of course there was no reaction from the stranger. I was seeing the imprint of memories, not people acting in real time. But the anger and hatred I had glimpsed in her eyes made me shudder. I tried to get a better look at the newcomer, the one in the sneakers, but the vision from the woman whose perspective I shared was fading quickly. I saw the newcomer from the back, not enough to tell much except the second person was short and had short blond hair.
Abruptly, the vision went dark.
My hand was shaking as I set the bowl down. “Did you all see that?” I asked, hearing the unsteadiness in my voice.
The others nodded. “Are you okay, Cassidy?” Sorren asked, looking at me with concern.
“I wouldn’t say I’m having fun,” I replied. “But if this helps us stop the killer, I’ll keep going until I drop.” I looked at Teag. “Did the police find odd fingerprints at the scenes of the murders?”
“Very few,” Teag replied. “That makes me think the ‘stranger’ knows to cover her tracks. But there were two prints that came up clearly—from the first Boston murders and then from the second Baltimore attack. They matched.”
“Did the police make anything out
of the match or I.D. the prints?” I asked.
Teag shook his head. “The police couldn’t identify the prints—not that unusual. Prints aren’t in the database unless a person’s been arrested for something. I ran the prints through the supernatural terrorist watch list on the Darke Web, but I haven’t gotten the results back yet.” Teag’s hacker abilities mean no database is safe from him, whether it’s the firewalls of the FBI or the unindexed content of the Deep Web, the heavily-protected illegal sites on the Dark Web, or the ensorcelled encryption on the Darke Web, where the immortal and supernatural community conducts its online business.
“You don’t need to,” Rowan said. “I think I recognize your ‘stranger.’” We all turned to look at her. “She’s a witch who goes by the name Alia Corona. Very powerful, very dangerous—seriously twisted, and not in a good way. The mortal authorities won’t have anything on her, but she’s been banned in the sorcery community for years. She disregards the Rede and uses her magic as an assassin and swindler. Preys on mundanes,” she added, meaning people without magic.
I looked to Sorren. “What about you? I tried my best to get a look at the newcomer, but I didn’t get much.”
Sorren looked worried. “What you saw might have been enough. It brought someone to mind I haven’t thought of in a long time.” He glanced toward Teag. “When we’re done here, I want you to run the name Brevard LaRive and see what you come up with.”
“You think he’s our killer?” I asked, puzzled.
“I think there might be a connection,” Sorren replied, and I knew he wasn’t going to elaborate until Teag was able to see if his hunch panned out.
“Rowan’s buffering a lot of the nasty emotional impact,” I said, realizing that—unlike what normally happens when I do a stressful reading of an object—I wasn’t a total wreck. “I can read a few more objects, if you’re up for it.”
Rowan nodded her assent. I frowned, trying to remember just which pieces of the table service the mysterious stranger had actually touched. Then I had Teag push the silver-plated pile toward me, and looked for the large serving fork. I closed my hand around the cool, smooth handle, and immediately found myself back in the dead family’s dining room, at an earlier point in the meal than my previous vision.
Everyone except the young boy had touched the serving fork. I sifted through the impressions. The older boy resented a stranger at the family’s gathering. I suspected that his anger covered a gut-level warning he didn’t know how to process. The teenage girl was bored, and the woman whose viewpoint I had shared before felt relief that the meal was on the table. From the grandfather, I picked up hunger and impatience, but the grandmother’s impression was wistful, as if she was remembering past holidays shared with people long gone. Little did she suspect how quickly she would join them.
Then I found the dark witch’s resonance. I nearly recoiled from the malevolence. She must have used her magic to appear harmless, because the depth and strength of her contempt for mortals took my breath away. I could believe Alia Corona was a magical assassin. She was a stone cold killer, remorseless and vengeful. Just the memory of her tainted power was enough to make me pull away.
For one awful moment, I saw her clearly without the glamor and her gray eyes locked with mine. I told myself it wasn’t really her, that she couldn’t really see me. Just a memory. Just a vision. But for that instant that our gaze connected, I was certain of something: She was looking forward to seeing the people around her die horribly, with just as much anticipation as the others held for the Thanksgiving feast. The serving fork clattered to the table, released by my fingers as if it had burned me.
I came up gasping from the intensity of the vision, brief as it was. The three-dimensional projection winked out around me as I opened my eyes, just as well since I didn’t think I was up to facing down Alia Corona right now, even if it was just her psychic imprint.
Sorren and Rowan packed the dishes and silverware into the box. Teag handed me his flask, then went to look up Brevard LaRive. I knocked back a slug of bourbon and let its warmth stop me from shaking. I could never un-see the awful vision of the family being set up for murder, but a little Knob Creek did the trick and made me numb enough to block it out, for a while. I’d see that family in my dreams for the rest of my life.
Sorren glanced my way, checking on me, and I gave him a nod. I was okay enough for now. He and Rowan withdrew to the other side of the room to talk, giving me a little space to pull myself together, for which I was grateful. I raised my right hand to touch the agate necklace that I always wore. Agate is a gem of protection. Just brushing my fingers across the cold stone sent purifying energy through me, helping me recover.
“You’re going to want to hear this,” Teag said when he emerged from my office about half an hour later. He carried several sheets of print-outs with him.
“Did you find any information?” Sorren asked, looking more worried than he had in a long while.
Teag nodded. “Yeah. Brevard LaRive’s name came up several times on the Darke Web. Nasty piece of work. Some of the mentions suggested he had a taste for the theatrical when it came to killing, but overall I thought that people sounded scared of him.”
Sorren turned away. “Thank you, Teag.”
“Why do you think he’ll choose Charleston? And how do we stop him?” I asked, feeling the warmth of the bourbon taking the edge off my nerves.
“Serial killers follow patterns that sometimes only make sense to themselves,” Teag said. “Charleston is the next city on his way south. So it would make sense for him to come here.”
“Yeah, but how do we figure out where he’s planning to show up for dinner?” I asked. “Charleston’s too big to go door to door.”
“I need to contact my coven,” Rowan said. “While you were focused on the images in the vision, I concentrated on what remained of Alia’s personal magical energy signature.” She gave a lopsided smile. “It’s a bit like giving a scent to a bloodhound. If my coven and I work together, we might be able to track her. It’s something of a long shot, but then again, her energy signature is pretty powerful, even though I’m sure she’s trying to mute it.”
“Do you think you could confirm whether or not she’s in Charleston?” Teag questioned.
Rowan shrugged. “That’s the idea. And if we pick up the residue of her energy, we might get lucky and be able to follow her—hopefully head her off before anyone else gets killed.”
“We would be very grateful to you—and your coven,” Sorren said. “Thank you.” Rowan nodded in acknowledgement, said goodbye, and slipped out.
“What can we do, while she and her coven are looking for Alia Corona?” I asked. “We can’t just sit and wait.”
“Let’s start with the obvious—public events and any kind of open listing of people willing to take in strangers for the holiday meal,” Teag said. “Since he seems to pick his victims by chance, it’s as good a way as any to predict who he might target.”
“Charleston’s a pretty hospitable city,” I replied. “There are going to be a lot of houses of worship and soup kitchens.”
“I don’t think Brevard would take on such a large gathering,” Sorren said shaking his head. “No. I think we’re looking for intimate, private gatherings. They would be smaller, easier to control, with less chance he might be interrupted.”
“It seems awfully complicated,” I said. “If he’s hungry, why make such a production out of it?” I asked.
Sorren’s expression was bleak. “Brevard was turned as a child. There are reasons such things are forbidden among our kind. Even after decades, Brevard has a child’s understanding and an immortal’s power.”
“Why does he need a witch?” I pressed, deciding that there wasn’t enough bourbon in Teag’s flask to make me feel better about the direction this conversation was taking.
“He’s not powerful enough to control all of them.” We turned to look at Teag. “That’s it, isn’t it? He can’t glamor them thoroughly en
ough to keep them all subdued while he attacks, and he needs someone to invite him inside.”
Sorren nodded. “Yes. At least, I believe so. Brevard will always appear to be ten years old. His instruction in the ways of the Dark Gift was interrupted when he lost his maker, so he’s damaged and untrained—doubly dangerous. He needs someone to win his victims’ trust. Apparently, Brevard and Alia Corona have come to some type of arrangement.”
“Why Thanksgiving?” I looked at Sorren.
“I suspect he wants to recreate going home for the holidays.”
Two days passed before we heard back from Rowan. The store was busy with people looking for last-minute additions to their formal table settings or purchasing silver service pieces to make a splash with their decorating. Being busy helped a little to keep my mind off the possibility of another impending murder, but Teag and I still spent every moment we could looking for information, anything that might help us narrow things down and save some lives.
“That’s interesting,” Teag mused. “Brevard LaRive’s mother was from Charleston.”
My heart sank. “So he’s got a personal connection here?” If so, that made it even more likely that Charleston was next on his list.
“Yeah. His mother was a Wilmot, from a prominent family. I started tracing his family tree, just in case I got a lucky hit. It’s amazing what shows up in those ancestry web sites.”
Just then, the bell on the door jangled. I looked up, and Rowan walked in. “Got something,” she said, not bothering with any greeting. She looked gaunt, a change since the last time I had seen her, and I wondered what all had been involved with having the coven try to track Alia Corona.
“Let’s go in the back,” I suggested. Maggie gave me a thumbs-up, indicating that she could handle customers. Maggie has figured out that we’re more than an antique store, and while she doesn’t know all the details, she’s happy to support us in any way she can.
Trifles and Folly 2 Page 11